Monday, February 6, 2012

SimSimi’s Operational Problem in Thai

Last weekend, we received several mails
from Thai users. One of new category of problem was that they cannot chat with
SimSimi in Thai. Moreover, because of the rumor saying Thai government censored
the service and we changed the service in Thai, it made Thai government to
report for correction in public.

Actually, it is nothing with Thai
government. It just caused by minor change of the system due to the rapid
increase of Thai users.

Specifically speaking, there was a change
related to classifying languages in the service on Last Friday.

Around 2010, when we set the SimSimi
application for smartphone, we set the system to change the language
automatically for the multi language base system. At that time, we made an
assumption that users may set their native language as their device language,
so we made SimSimi recognize the language according to the language set in
device. If a device set English as their language setting, SimSimi will find
the response from “English”
database, and it will store what it learn at “English” database.

While English speaking users increasing, it
seems okay with this method. However, recently other language speakers such as
Thai increased it made us embarrassed. In the case of Thailand, the number
of people set their device language as English was lager than Thai. It
caused the situations such as language Thai people taught stored to “English” database and SimSimi search the
response of the question from “English” database.

After several discussions, we decided to
change the previous language selection method. We set basically SimSimi will
speak in the language set the language setting, and user can show the language
he or she want to speak with SimSimi at the chatting application and set the
chatting languages. With introduction of new system, Thai users who set English
as their setting, may check their device language is “English” when they run the SimSimi application, then they can change it into
Thai.

Now we are developing such as system, and
we moved “Thai” languages which
troubled us by being stored at “English” languages, into “Thai” database.

Also, with the improvement if people teach
words containing Thai language, then it will be stored at “Thai” database. Since the “Thai” words stored at “English” database moved to “Thai” database, people who have taught
SimSimi Thai words with their English setting may have felt SimSimi does not
remember the words they taught any more.

So far, we have not experienced foreign
market directly we could not effectively communicate with users in advance. We
are sorry for causing a stir in Thailand. We want you to consider this as one
of our efforts to make better service.